Spurs extend Murray’s contract

In an expected move, the Spurs announced Sunday that they have exercised their third-year team option on guard Dejounte Murray for the 2018-19 season.

This is Murray’s second season with the club after it selected him in the first round of the 2016 NBA draft (29th overall).

Rookie contracts for first-round picks are for four years, but the third and fourth seasons have team options. To lock up a player for his fourth year, a team must extend the deal before the start of the third season.

Murray, 21, is expected to start the season at point guard while Tony Parker continues to rehab from surgery to repair the left quadriceps tendon he ruptured in May in the playoffs against Houston.

Murray averaged 3.4 points and 1.3 assists over 8.5 minutes in 38 games last season. In 11 playoff games, he averaged 5.7 points and 2.5 assists in 15.3 minutes.

Murray participated in practice Sunday after sitting out a 106-97 win over Houston in the preseason finale last week with a bruised right hip.

Schedule not in harmony: Pau Gasol would love nothing more than to be there when renowned tenor and fellow Spaniard Placido Domingo performs Wednesday night at the Illusions Theater at the Alamdome.

But duty calls for the 17th-year center. The Spurs open the regular season Wednesday night at the AT&T Center.

“I don’t get it, I don’t get it. I doooon’t get it,” Gasol said only half-jokingly. “Placido Domingo comes to San Antonio and it’s the same time and day we play a game. I don’t get what went wrong. Somebody messed up here. They didn’t check the schedule.

I would have a tough choice to make if I was a fan and not a basketball player. Which one do I go to?”

Gasol and Domingo are fans of each other’s work and have formed a friendship.

“I think he really loves legitimately opera,” Domingo told NBCSports.com while watching Gasol play for Chicago in 2016. “To come once or twice by chance, but he comes and enjoys it with his family also.”

Gasol said he hopes to dine with Domingo either before or after his performance.

“I will try to call him or text him later to see what his schedule is and how long he is going to be in town,” Gasol said. “Probably in and out knowing his schedule. Somebody messed up (with this scheduling conflict).”

Wise move: Guard Manu Ginobili applauded the NBA’s decision to start the season earlier, noting it will do his 40-year-old body good.

By extending the season a full week, the NBA has eliminated stretches where teams play four games in five nights, reducing travel stress and giving players more recovery time.

“There is going to be more resting between games,” Ginobili said. “That is important for everybody in the league, especially for me. I am going to be on the court a couple of more games, maybe three, four games. It’s smart.

“You want as a league, as a team, as a franchise, as everything to keep as many franchise players on the court — and, of course, I am not talking about me at this point — playing and not worried about a potential injury or resting or something like that. It’s been a great move.”

After three years as a part-time employee covering mainly high school sports, Tom Orsborn became a full-time employee at the Express-News in October 1985. He's covered the Dallas Cowboys and the NFL since 1999 and has also covered the Spurs, the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and a variety of other events, including 14 Super Bowls.